New Year.

Last year I posted a text-heavy blog ripe with reflections on 2010 and all of the things I hoped for 2011.

I don't think I'm going to do that this year.

For some reason, I don't really have much desire to go about purging, cleansing, and changing things.

This, for me, feels like a year of building, growing, creating, adding, and putting in.

Don't get me wrong. 

We just finished purging the basement and ground floors of our house and re-arranging furniture, and I have big plans for the bedrooms (like getting rid of 80% of our stuff)...

But this year isn't about making all sorts of changes.  For me, it's about continuing to move in a particular direction.  This is the first time I've really felt this way...ever.

In 2010 I learned a lot about love.  I learned a lot about freedom.  I learned a lot about motherhood and growth and friendship and learning and God.  Mostly, I've learned that perfection is a pipe dream and that Love without Freedom is a joke.  I've learned that God is so faceted and complex that I can't ever begin to really understand Him, but I have to keep trying, or I'll lose my mind.

I've been face with trying to understand those who think in vastly different ways from me - it's challenged my brain, soul, and heart.  My mind has bent and twisted in multiple directions over this short year.  I've made new friends.  I've kept some old ones.

Over the New Year holiday we were able to visit family and a few of our old friends.  One of those friends is Pete, whose wife is suffering from cancer.  They have a new baby, Micah, who is charged with beauty.  We got to meet him and hang out with his dad for a brief time on our way to visit Michael's family.  It was nice to reconnect, and maybe fill a void, and we were fed as people...  I hope that the feeling is mutual.

We also got to crash with my college roommate and her family at their new house in upstate New York.  They live in a charming and lovely rental house with amazing wood floors, a stained glass window in the bathroom, and all of the warmth I grew accustomed to when my friend was closer by.  It was fun to see how her children are growing and to see them play with mine.

It's funny.  These older friendships don't pour on emptiness and melancholy when it's time to leave.  Instead, they make me feel full.

To know that there are people with whom there is never a need to be self-conscious...people who know you for Who You Really Are and don't ever judge...people who give real advice and genuine smiles and aren't afraid to shed tears with you...it's perhaps the most satisfying feeling there is in this world.